Walden holds Internet planning symposium in Singapore

The venture capital investor brought together its portfolio of dot-com investee companies with the intention of letting them network with one another, and explore collaboration opportunities, while exchanging experiences and ideas.

Today marked the end of two half-day sessions, proceeding along the theme of "pan-Asia strategy and execution". In conjunction with the vested interests of WIIG, an Internet Party was held last night at Goodwood Park Hotel. The keynote speaker, Crawford Jamieson, also the executive director of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Asia Ltd, gave an educational overview on the state of e-business in Asia and a projection of how it would progress.

Among the companies that were involved in the symposium were Singapore companies MediaRing.com, 2bSure.com, CommonTown, eGuide, JobStreet, Webvisions, Buzzcity, SurfGold.com, and EBBis.com, as well as Edsamail from the Philippines, and other regional players.

"By leveraging on our international network of offices and affiliates, and through a symposium such as this, we are able to expand the horizons of our investee companies and facilitate collaboration on an international level," said US-based Mr Andrew Kau, executive vice-president and chairman of WIIG's Internet Investment Committee.

Who's in, who's not
"Of all the things that I could list, the most important criteria of all these are the people," said Jonathan Tay, vice-president with WIIG, when asked what criteria the company looked out for before supporting potential investees.

He added that it was the people in the company that he took note of, more so than any one product the company was selling.

Companies have to learn fast, he said, there's not much room to make mistakes. Or rather, there isn't time to make mistakes. A simple mistake in the Internet environment is magnified in terms of time and damage, he said. A slip-up could put a company behind for just a stint, but the competitive pace of e-business is too fast to be merciful.

Dot coms also have to learn to start working with others, said Tay, they have to start realizing that they can't do everything on their own. Joint ventures, strategic alliances, partnerships, and even acquisitions are things that they have to start considering in order to remain viable to their clients.

Walden invests US$2.4 million in Webvisions Singapore company to build Asia Pacific Internet data centre